hello i am soniclovenoize. because i have too much time on my hands, i waste it by reconstructing famous unreleased albums. here are some of them. enjoy.

Monday, December 24, 2018

The Beach Boys - SMiLE (upgrade)

The Beach
Boys – SMiLE

(soniclovenoize
reconstruction)

December
2018 UPGRADE

Disc 1 –
SMiLE ’67 Reconstruction

Side A:

1.Our Prayer - Heroes and Villains

2.Vege-Tables

3.Do You Like Worms?

4.Child is Father of The Man

5.The Old Master Painter

6.Cabin Essence

Side B:

7.Good Vibrations

8.Wonderful

9.I’m In Great Shape

10.Wind Chimes

11. The
Elements

12.Surf’s Up

BONUS
MATERIAL:

Disc 2 – The
Beach Boys Present SMiLE + Vintage Brian Wilson Mixes

1.Our Prayer - Gee

2.Heroes and Villains

3.Do You Like Worms?

4.Barnyard

5.The Old Master Painter

6.Cabin Essence

7.Wonderful

8.Look

9.Child is Father of The Man

10.Surf’s Up

11.I’m In Great Shape

12.Vege-Tables

13.Holidays

14.Wind Chimes

15.Mrs. O’Leary’s Cow

16.I Love To Say Dada

17.Good Vibrations

18.Our Prayer (December 1966 Comp Reel)

19.Wonderful (December 1966 Comp Reel)

20.Cabin Essence (December 1966 Comp Reel)

21.Child is Father of The Man (December 1966
Comp Reel)

22.Do You Like Worms? (December 1966 Comp Reel)

23.Vege-Tables (1967 Track Assembly)

Disc 3 –
Behind The SMiLE

1.Good Vibrations (March 1966 Reconstruction)

2.Good Vibrations (May 1966 Reconstruction)

3.Good Vibrations (June 1966 Reconstruction)

4.Wind Chimes (Early Version Reconstruction)

5.Wind Chimes (Backing Track Reconstruction)

6.Wonderful (Chronological Reconstruction)

7.Cabin Essence (Backing Track Reconstruction)

8.Child is Father of The Man (Early Version
Reconstruction)

9.Child is Father of The Man (Stereo Backing Track
Reconstruction)

10.Do You Like Worms? (Backing Track
Reconstruction)

11.Surf’s Up (1966 Mix Reconstruction)

12.Heroes and Villains (November 1966
Reconstruction)

13.Heroes and Villains (January 1967
Reconstruction)

14.Heroes and Villains (February 1967
Reconstruction/'Part II")

15.Heroes and Villains (March 1967
Reconstruction)

16.I Love To Say Dada (Chronological
Reconstruction)

17.The Elements (Excerpts from Psychedelic
Sounds)

Merry
Christmas and happy Holidays!This is an
UPGRADE to my reconstruction of The Beach Boys SMiLE album.For this special occasion, I offer a special
three-disc set...Disc 1 contains the
standard, upgraded mono and stereo versions of my SMiLE ’67 Mix, which attempts
to recreate what the SMiLE album would have sounded like in 1967. Disc 2 contains an all-stereo, all-Beach Boys
version of SMiLE, structured in three movements just as 2004’s Brian Wilson Presents
SMiLE; as a bonus, it also contains several vintage Brian Wilson mixes—mostly a
reconstruction and remaster of Brian Wilson’s December 1966 Comp Reel, his
first attempt to compile a series of SMiLE era mixes.Disc 3 contains an hour of custom-made bonus
material and reconstructions meant to showcase the making of the album—Behind
The SMiLE.

The upgrades
in this December 2018 edition of SMiLE ’67 are:

- Remade
“Child is Father of The Man” which follows the structure of Brian Wilson’s
vintage three-minute 1966 test edit (both mono and stereo).

- Remixed
“Cabin Essence” (stereo).

- Remade
“The Old Master Painter” using the correct take 11 as the core of the song
(stereo).

- SMiLE 2004
reconstruction is updated with aforementioned sources and included on Disc 2

- Creation
and inclusion of Disc 3, Behind The SMiLE, as well as remastered Brian Wilson
vintage mixes on Disc 2

* See
included essay ‘Behind The SMiLE’ for specific song, recording and argument
information.

Much has
been written about the unreleased album SMiLE; even more so in recent history
due to The SMiLE Sessions boxset.The
first disc of that set was purported to be an accurate reconstruction of what
SMiLE would have been.But is it
so?Most likely not: the tracklist is
based upon the sequence found on Brian Wilson’s 2004 solo album Brian Wilson
Presents SMiLE, in which the great artist finally “finished SMiLE”.Well surely, that was how SMiLE was supposed
to sound?Again, most likely not: that
sequence was devised by The Brian Wilson Band musical director Darian Sahanaja
for the purpose of the previous year’s SMiLE Tour, as an interesting live
performance that showcased all of the known and popular SMiLE tracks.Furthermore, his vision of SMiLE seemed to be
greatly influenced by sequences found on known bootlegs in the 1990s as well as
fan fiction on their own SMiLE mixes.As
a matter of fact, Brian Wilson himself has admitted that what we think of as
the “finished SMiLE” is not what it would have sounded like in 1967; Wilson
himself didn’t even know what it would have sounded like, even in 1967!By spring 1967, the album itself was
abandoned and he focused on two songs for a single release (“Heroes and
Villains” and “Vege-Tables”) and the structure of those two songs changed from
day to day!

How could we
possibly assemble something that Brian Wilson himself couldn’t?Fans and SMiLE aficionados have been spending
the last 40 years making their own SMiLE mixes, so it’s not an unreachable
dream.After over fifteen years of
research, I believe I have found a method to make an extremely educated guess
to what the album contained and how it was structured.First and foremost, I offer that SMiLE would
have been a singular, two-sided album of twelve banded pop-songs, just as Pet
Sounds was; not three conceptual suites or movements; it would not have been a three-movement suite as it exists today.As much as we won’t want to imagine it, SMiLE
is just an album.Anything more might be
succumbing to mythos.

But of all
the many pieces recorded for SMiLE, what would be included?Our first clue is found in a handwritten
tracklist addressed to Capitol Records, which was used to manufacture LP
mock-up artwork for the album.The
tracks included, in this order: “Do You Like Worms?”, “Wind Chimes”, “Heroes
and Villains”, “Surf’s Up”, “Good Vibrations”, “Cabin Essence”, “Wonderful”,
“I’m In Great Shape”, “Child Is Father Of The Man”, “The Elements”,
“Vege-Tables” and “The Old Master Painter”.Any listener who can make a playlist will know this is a terrible track
sequence for an album; there is no flow or cohesion and the two sides do not
time-out correctly!My theory is that
this was not the specific intended track order of the album, but instead a
shortlist of the songs that would be on the final album; note that the more
completed songs are listed first and the most ‘under construction’ songs listed
last.Thus certain SMiLE staples not
included on the list such as “Look”, “He Gives Speeches” or “Holidays” would be
excluded from the final running order of an authentic 1967 SMiLE.The one exception is “Our Prayer”, used as an
(uncredited) opening track outside of the twelve, which was Brian Wilson’s
intention at the time.

The next
step is to “finish” each of the twelve songs as close to how Brian Wilson
envisioned the songs in 1966-1967.Some
already exist as finished mixes (“Wonderful”, the ‘Cantina Version’ of “Heroes
and Villains”), while we have vintage test edits for others to base a reconstruction
off of (“Do You Like Worms?”, “Wind Chimes”, “Child is Father of The
Man”).We will have to make educated
guesses for the remainders based on primary sources and session information
(“I’m In Great Shape”, “The Elements”).Also
note, no anachronistic digital “fly-ins” were used to complete songs; in my view, leaving
some songs unfinished seemed more authentic than using sound elements recorded
in 2004.Finally, we will organize these
twelve songs into two sides of an LP, unbanded (unconnected or unsegued) with
each side beginning with a ‘hit’ and each side closing with an ‘epic’.

Side A of my
SMiLE ’67 begins with “Our Prayer”, just as instructed by Brian Wilson on
session tapes.My mono mix uses the
version from The SMiLE Sessions and stereo from Made in California.It segues directly into the ‘hit’ of side A,
“Heroes and Villains”.Here we use what
is called ‘The Cantina Version’, the mix of the song prepared by Brian on
February 10th, 1967—what I believe is the version of the song truly intended
for SMiLE; both mono and stereo versions taken from The SMiLE Sessions.Next is also what follows on the
Smiley Smile album: “Vege-Tables”.My
construction removes the third verse as I thought it was lyrically redundant and
disrupted the gradual ‘winding-down’ flow of the song.The mono mix is edited from The Smile
Sessions and stereo mix edited from Made in California.My own unique construction of “Do You Like
Worms?” follows, based on Brian Wilson’s test mixes from December 1966.Note that in my stereo mix—created from
syncing the isolated vocals to the assembled backing tracks—the tack piano of
the ‘Bicycle Rider’ theme pre-chorus travels stereophonically from right to left,
reminiscent of the pilgrims and pioneers moving across America during the Western Expansion—who The Bicycle Rider presents!All
sources edited from The SMiLE Sessions.

Next is a
reconstruction of “Child is Father of The Man” based on the structure of Brian
Wilson’s three-minute 1966 test edit, which featured a standard
verse/chorus/verse/chorus structure.All
sources edited from The SMiLE Sessions.Following is “The Old Master Painter”.Although the song was known to conclude with the ‘Barnshine’ Fade from
“Heroes and Villains”, here we utilize the rerecorded bird whistle Fade from
March 1967 since the original Fade is already in use on “Heroes and Villains”.Mono mix is edited from The SMiLE Sessions,
stereo mix is a splice between that and the stereo master take from Unsurpassed
Masters Vol 16.Side B concludes with the epic
song that cannot be topped: “Cabin Essence”.While the mono mix is taken from The SMiLE Sessions, my stereo mix
features the isolated lead vocals from 20/20 and backing vocals from The SMiLE Sessions,
synced up to the stereo backing tracks from The SMiLE Sessions.The result is a fuller stereophonic mix with
the instruments panned left and right and vocals centered, rather than vice
versa as per the common 20/20 version.

Side B opens
with the ‘hit’ of this half of the album, as it did on Smiley Smile: “Good
Vibrations”, both mono and stereo mixes from the 2012 remaster of Smiley
Smile.Next is “Wonderful”, mono mix
sourced from The Smile Sessions.The
stereo mix features the master from the 1993 Good Vibrations box set synced up
with the isolated backing vocals from The Smile Sessions.“I’m In Great Shape” is one of the many
unsolved mysteries of SMiLE, and probably always will be.Here we presume it to be the four-part
‘Barnyard Suite’ Brian alluded to in the 1970s, using “I’m In Great Shape” and
“Barnyard” as its base; it is completed with “I Wanna Be Around” and “Friday
Night”, both labeled as ‘Great Shape’ on their tape box and who also feature a slightly
farm-like theme.

Next is
“Wind Chimes”, edited from the mono on The Smile Sessions and stereo edited from
Made In California, but restructured to match Brian Wilson’s 1966 test
edits.Following is “The Elements”, a
hotly-debated subject of SMiLE Lore.Here we will create a self-contained piece that covers all four Elements
without overlapping with previous songs (“Wind Chimes”, “Vege-Tables”, etc).Fire is represented by the
‘Firetruck’ Intro to “Heroes and Villains”, crossfaded into “Mrs. O’Leary’s Cow”
and concluding with the fire sound effects from the session; Earth is
represented by the percussive “I Love to Say Dada – part 1” that brings peddles
and rolling rocks to mind and concludes with vegetable chants from Psychedelic
Sounds; Air is represented by “Second Day”, with its flute conjuring up images
of the breeze and concluding with wheezing chants from Psychedelic Sounds; Water
is represented by “I Love To Say Dada – Part 2”, it’s treated piano reminiscent
of running water and concluding with underwater chanting from Psychedelic
Sounds.Finally, SMiLE concludes with
the song Vosse stated was to end the album: “Surf’s Up”, mono and stereo taken from The SMiLE
Sessions.

If you find
this reconstruct a bit hard to swallow, I don’t blame you; fifty years of SMiLE
mythology has very much overshadowed the facts; hype has become reality.So on Disc 2, I have also included an updated
version of my all-stereo reconstruction of SMiLE based on 2004’s Brian Wilson
Presents SMiLE.If you feel that was how
SMiLE should be, well, here it is!Following are a set of bonus tracks, my own remaster of Brian’s original
December 1966 Comp Reel, his first assemblage of SMiLE era mixes. Also included
is my remaster of Brian’s test edit of “Vege-Tables”; not originally a part of
the reel but is included for historical relevancy.

But the real
fun can be found on Disc 3, Behind The SMiLE.Meant as a ‘making-of’ audio documentary, it is an assemblage of stereo
backing tracks, alternate versions and possible variations.Included are what I call ‘chronological
reconstructions’, in which the many modulations of a specific song are
organized in the order of when they were recorded.In effect the listener can understand Brian
Wilson’s ideas for a given song in real time.Behind The SMiLE is also meant to be listened along with the included
Behind The SMiLE essay, which includes recording notes for each song.

Great work! The problem with Smile has always been (even for Brian Wilson) knowing where to stop, and the idea that we must somehow incorporate every piece he recorded to get an accurate reconstruction has led to most fan reconstructions sounding scrappy. Your editing here is probably as close as we'll ever get to hearing it as it might have been envisaged by Brian Wilson. The incompletions are still apparent, of course, but we're so used to them by now it's hardly an issue, like the arms of the Venus de Milo.

But to these ears, the first section of your stereo H&V (which you say is from the Smile Sessions) sounds suspiciously like mono. I've A-B'd it with the stereo version on the Smile Sessions and the stereo Smiley Smile. Care to comment? Is it my ears?

Yes, the first verse is in mono. That recording (vocals tracked on Feb 10th) only exists as a mono mix, as the mastertapes have been lost. The stereo versions on Smiley Smile (and on The SMiLE Sessions) are a completely different set of vocals, that imo are not as powerful as the ones from the 2/10 sessions. So unfortunately, my H&V is in mono for 50 seconds, because switching to stereo.

Hey sonic, just a very small tidbit that I thought would be useful in here:

Since Vosse said the album would end with a "choral, amen sort of thing", and Brian said that Our Prayer would be the intro to the album, we end up with the same song on two possible places in the tracklist.

However, what I ask is: why not do both? The intro with the December '66 edit of Our Prayer, and the outro, just after Surf's Up, using the "reprise" that is used on The Smile Sessions' "Love to Say Dada", at the very end.

Did you consider something like that and decide it wasn't a good idea, or simply didn't think of it?

(By the way, been reading your Behind the Smile essay for the second time now, fantastic stuff!)

Yeah, that's in interesting idea. Ultimately, I don't think I personally would do it though, since we don't have any direct evidence that BW intended to reprise musical elements or do any call-backs... otherwise, Vosse, VDP, Anderle, etc probably would have stated it at some point. I think the idea of having reoccurring musical motifs in SMiLE was an effect of BW just simply moving pieces from one song to another, rather than any sort of reality or intentional thing.

Father Christmas brings gifts of yuletide merriment! This is perfect timing, was just listening to Sunshine Tomorrow, much to my surprise, offered through my American Airlines music channel on my way home from holiday vacation. Always on the wavelength, brother!

Very nice! So far my favorite thing here is this version of "Old Master Painter", wow!

Coincidentally, the past couple weeks I've starting redoing my own personal Smile mix, and being inspired by your mix, I had decided to lean a lot more towards doing 12 separate songs. It was cool coming to here to see the upgrade.

Yesterday I finally put bits down and put together another smile mix. This one was finally a 12 separate song mix (ok some flow happened, but each track strands on it's own, with a fade out) I ended up borrowing a few of your tracks.

Thanks, Sonic; this is great. I have to say your 1967 version ( mono ) is my favorite, and probably as close to what would have been released then. Now if we only had the tracks for that Buffalo Springfield LP mentioned in John Einarson's book.....

One thing I've never heard about is where did the arrangement for the 1971 live version of "Heroes and Villains" come from? While they say that the song is from "Smiley Smile" they pull in both the elements of "Bicycle Rider" and the "The Heroes, The Heroes" chant. I wonder if it's from one an attempt to finish smile that was aborted has been lost.

Vocal quality is a good reason for using the mono section, but I doubt if a stereo Smile would have used mono sections! I stripped out your H&V and used the stereo version of the "original" (non-Cantina) because that's the version - in mono - I grew up with, and I get the quality vox (and the Cantina) on your mono album anyway.

My introduction to Smile was Dave Prokopy's Smile Tape, back before music was shared over the internet. I think I've heard most of the fan attempts (Through A Vast Crystal Sphere's was a favourite). And the Domenic Priore book, which was the Smile Bible for many years. The work you've done here, with all the fascinating "back story" presented so cleverly, takes Smile reconstruction to a new level, and unless we get some new source material from the vaults, it's likely to be the reference standard, the inevitable quibbles aside! Brilliant work.

Oh! You are right! Instead of using The Smile Sessions' mono Cabin Essence, I collapsed my own stereo mix. I completely forgot I had done that! So thus my notes are wrong. This is what happens when you revise something over a period of two years, lol.

To be honest, it probably isn't a direct fold-down, as I probably split the L/R channels of the backing track and balanced them appropriately. Either way, I think it soudns better than the Smile Sessions mono mix, which was the idea.

After many years of listening to my own hacked up mix of SMiLE (made about 2009), I finally this year decided to do a remix adding in mostly bits from your previous SMiLE. I also chopped down my mix from its previous 60 minutes (being a BWPS configuration with extras!) to about 44 minutes... making it a little more plausible (a huge ask of Crapitol in 1967 on the hypothetical part of Brian, but plausible). Some tracks were easier to chop out than others (I had "He Gives Speeches" rolled into Plymouth Rock) and some sacrificial lambs were really missed ("Look"... I like "Look!") but I think I balanced it nicely. The track-listing is as follows:

Side One1. Our Prayer2. Heroes and Villains (includes Gee and the Cantina)3. Roll Plymouth Rock (per BWPS)4. Cabin Essence 5. Wonderful6. Child Is Father Of Man (that bass lick at the end of Wonderful segues nicely here!)7. Surf's Up

Side TwoThe Elements8. Part 1: Earth (I'm In Great Shape, I Wanna Be Around, Workshop, Vega-Tables)9. Part 2: Wind (Holiday, Wind Chimes)10. Part 3: Fire (Mrs. O'Leary's Cow)11. Part 4: Water (Cool Water, Water Chant, I Love To Say Dada)12. Part 5: Aether (Good Vibrations)13. You're Welcome (a hidden track that Crapitol may or may not have known about... could be about a certain lawsuit...)

Totally implausible and completely unrealistic?! Yeah, probably. The likelihood that Brian would be so focused, have Mike Love appeased, have this much Proto-Prog Rock in his mind, and create a Water Suite at the last minute out of song bits that IRL wouldn't get recorded until months later are pretty slim. But neither are anybody elses's mixes so... *shrugs* Would knock Sgt. Pepper's socks off, though.

To ease the pain of keeping some stuff off of SMiLE, my head canon has the Beach Boys follow it up with a "companion LP" to SMiLE later in the summer called SMiLEY SMiLE. It's an odd disk that could've totally been a contractual obligation of filler, but it's as interesting and maybe as chill as the IRL version...

Why did you use the Smile Sessions version of "Vegetables", instead of making a mockup of the "April Assembly" acetate?

I think that would be a more accurate representation of what the song would look like back in '67. Just organizing the fragments on the acetate, getting rid of the breakdown chorus, and adding the fade, just like Linnett did in '88, but without the damn crossfade! :D

Was that a stylistical choice, as you felt such a version would be inferior, or you simply didn't think of it?

In my opinion, I don't think the "April Assembly" was the definitive assemblage of the track in 1967. I believe it was more a reel of a rough assemblage of what was done so far (much like his Dec '66 Comp Reel edits of Child and Cabin Essence). It sounded like a work in progress rather than a blueprint of how the track should be assembled. Very rough, very unfinished, missing many sections he had just put a lot of effort into recording (that Fade!!).

Case in point, BW would just *two months later* rerecord most of the sections he tracked in April, and the Smiley Smile version did indeed have the musical ideas (albeit rerecorded) that were missing in the April Assembly (but without the Mama Said chorus, of course; perhaps that was already gutted). Then of course, Linett would make two entirely different edits in 1988 and 1993. Then it was different again for BWPS and different yet again for The Smile Sessions.

Conclusions? There might *never* have been a definitive SMiLE construction of Vege-Tables. Which is why I did my own.

So to answer your question, yes, it was more a stylistic choice. I assembled the song as I thought was most logical--which was essentially the Smile Sessions version but with the extra bit removed, so that the song starts uptempo and slows down steadily as the song goes. I toyed with using the Smiley Smile construction as a blueprint for the a SMiLE assemblage (but with the choruses and Fade restored) and simply did not like it as much as what I already had.

there has never been a music site with better "liner notes" and this is one of the BEST! i wish an awards show was dedicated to something i appreciate here in cyberspace. i would present a statuette now!